"Arlen" he said,... "welcome to the hog trough."
Posted on 02/28/2009 2:22:23 PM PST by DBCJR
It was almost as if he were a Senator again, chairing a committee hearing.
Instead Joe Biden was in the heart of one of the nation’s largest working class regions as the vice president, overseeing the inaugural meeting of a task force to figure out how to usher in a new day for the middle class.
Biden delivered 20-minute opening remarks on the ways “green” jobs – the focus of the meeting – will be a cornerstone of that turnaround. And, back in his old element, part moderator, part referee, he appeared to genuinely enjoy each of the two-and-a-half-hours that followed.
“I warn everybody,” he said in a stark tone he used to convey the seriousness of the $787 billion stimulus bill as the “platform” for a rejuvenated economy. “It’s either going to be a platform or a tombstone.”
Biden promised a number of times throughout the meeting that the success or failure of the Obama administration will be based on whether “the middle class is getting its fair share of the economic growth.”
“Because over the course over the last economic expansion the middle class had participated in very few of the benefits,” he said. “We want to make sure that does not happen again.”
Biden sat in the center of a white-cloth draped dais surrounded by Cabinet secretaries and elected officials, as business owners and environmental experts testified about creating jobs in environmentally friendly industries. At times, he showed a flair for the dramatic.
“Arlen,” he said to Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), one of only three Republicans who voted for the stimulus bill, “this legislation would not exist were it not for you.”
And at other times Joe Biden even had to play timekeeper, ever so apologetically.
“I have to cut you off,” he said as someone talked too long.
The meeting was the first for the task force President Barack Obama created last month to determine how to revitalize the middle class. It featured eight panelists, including Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter and Leo Gerard, president of the Steelworkers of America. They each testified about how to generate green jobs – which Biden defined as “good, high-paying jobs, the vast majority of which are not exportable.”
The only commentary that rivaled Biden’s came from green jobs activist Van Jones. “Let’s green the ghetto first,” Jones said during his testimony, drawing applause before adding that they should encourage young people to “put down those handguns and pick up those caulking guns.”
Biden oversaw the summit with many of the same personal touches he became known for as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and, before that, of the Judiciary Committee.
He opened with a joke.
“It’s the first time in my life my Senate colleagues ever stood for me,” he said, referring to Specter and Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) who were part of a crowd that rose to its feet when Biden entered the stage. “It’s worth the job, worth the trip.”
He provided the reliable lift of the audience’s drooping eyes with the occasional quip or some Biden-style plain-speak.
“We need to drag the economy out of a hole,” he said.
Asked if the panel could invite Rep. Tim Murphy (D-Pa.) to come up from the audience and sit at the dais, Biden said, “No.”
Then he laughed. “Of course we can,” he said. “I thought he was preserving his reputation by sitting down there.”
The audience ate it up.
And the vice president will get many more opportunities to showcase himself in this familiar setting.
The meeting was “the first of what will be a series of town meetings and hearings all across America over the next year to determine how we deal with those elements of the economy that most affect the middle class,” he said.
“We’re going to do this all across America.”
Pennsylvania, remember that!
The Democrats and their green crap are going to destroy us all. Its BS science and total theft.
"Arlen" he said,... "welcome to the hog trough."
There is really no point in calling these Senators “Republican”, they are just a little right of Kerry and Kennedy.
The green crap is just like medicare, medicaid , social security, and national healthcare. a way for these criminals to reach into the black hole they’ve created and suck the taxpayers money dry! THIS IS CRIMINAL! THEY ARE CRIMINALS, THEY NEED TO BE STOPPED, MASS VOTING FOR CONSERVATIVES 2010!
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